all vanishes; that person leaves the stage and never comes back.
The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took partâwhen they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didnât know what would happen next, but who were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted. You can find that spirit in the early years of the Civil Rights movement, where some people paid for their wish to act with their lives, and you can find it in certain songs. But the Sixties were also a time when people who could have acted, and even those who did, or believed they did, formed themselves into an audience that most of all wanted to watch. âThe Whole World Is Watchingâ was a stupid irony: people went into the streets, they shouted, gave speeches, surrounded buildings, blocked the police, and then rushed home to watch themselves on the evening news, to be an audience for their own actions. I did it like anyone else. It seemed like a natural thing to do.
Pump Up the Volume faces this possibility, and in idealism and fantasy rejects it. Against the Sixties carnival, it insists on a desert, geographically and culturally, literally and metaphorically,
and says that where there seems to be nothing, something new can appear. It posits a trivial settingâone nowhere high school, the setting of such tepid, already-made post-1950s, post-1960s high school movies as Footloose or Rock ânâ Roll High School âand says that out of this trivial setting can come people who are not trivial, people who the setting was never meant to make.
What does it mean to make cultural history? It means to make images and sounds, to launch ideas and sensations that feel absolutely new even if they are not. Cultural history is a matter of old forms dressed in new clothes that turn history in a new direction. Cultural history may mean to triumphâto achieve worldwide and enduring fame, even to affect the lives of countless people long after you are gone, as the Doors did; more likely it means to find yourself stranded in the history that goes on without you, incapable of killing, in yourself, the notion that things could be better, or merely different, more alive, than they are, which may have been what Jim Morrison saw when, that night in Miami in 1969, he looked out at the people in the crowd and told them, âYouâre all a bunch of fucking idiots! Letting people tell you what youâre going to do! Letting people push you around! How long do you think itâs going to last? How long are you going to let it go on? How long are you going to let them push you around? How long? Maybe you like it, maybe you like being pushed around. Maybe you love it, maybe you love getting your face stuck in the shit. Come on. You love it, donât you. You love it. Youâre all a bunch of slaves.â People cheered and laughed; they thought it was part of the act, part of the show. Finally, with the band keeping a count behind him, Morrison tried to go back to the song heâd started with, until he couldnât anymore.
Lady Gaga, âBad Romanceâ (Streamline, 2009, #1).
Train, âHey, Soul Sisterâ (Columbia, 2010, #3).
The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone, written by J. Randall Johnson and Oliver Stone (1991).
Pump Up the Volume, written and directed by Allan Moyle (1990).
Neil Young, âRockinâ in the Free Worldâ/âRockinâ in the Free Worldâ (Reprise, 1989; both versions are included on Freedom, Reprise, 1989).
p. 58, Gina Arnold, âFools Rush In,â East Bay Express , March 8, 1991, 47.
Eve Babitz, âJim Morrison Is Alive and Well and Living in Hollywood,â Esquire , March 1991.
Elvis Costello, quoted in Mark Rowland, âStrange Bedfellowsâ (joint interview with Jerry Garcia), Musician , March 1991, 57.
Ian McEwan, The Innocent (New York:
The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took partâwhen they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didnât know what would happen next, but who were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted. You can find that spirit in the early years of the Civil Rights movement, where some people paid for their wish to act with their lives, and you can find it in certain songs. But the Sixties were also a time when people who could have acted, and even those who did, or believed they did, formed themselves into an audience that most of all wanted to watch. âThe Whole World Is Watchingâ was a stupid irony: people went into the streets, they shouted, gave speeches, surrounded buildings, blocked the police, and then rushed home to watch themselves on the evening news, to be an audience for their own actions. I did it like anyone else. It seemed like a natural thing to do.
Pump Up the Volume faces this possibility, and in idealism and fantasy rejects it. Against the Sixties carnival, it insists on a desert, geographically and culturally, literally and metaphorically,
and says that where there seems to be nothing, something new can appear. It posits a trivial settingâone nowhere high school, the setting of such tepid, already-made post-1950s, post-1960s high school movies as Footloose or Rock ânâ Roll High School âand says that out of this trivial setting can come people who are not trivial, people who the setting was never meant to make.
What does it mean to make cultural history? It means to make images and sounds, to launch ideas and sensations that feel absolutely new even if they are not. Cultural history is a matter of old forms dressed in new clothes that turn history in a new direction. Cultural history may mean to triumphâto achieve worldwide and enduring fame, even to affect the lives of countless people long after you are gone, as the Doors did; more likely it means to find yourself stranded in the history that goes on without you, incapable of killing, in yourself, the notion that things could be better, or merely different, more alive, than they are, which may have been what Jim Morrison saw when, that night in Miami in 1969, he looked out at the people in the crowd and told them, âYouâre all a bunch of fucking idiots! Letting people tell you what youâre going to do! Letting people push you around! How long do you think itâs going to last? How long are you going to let it go on? How long are you going to let them push you around? How long? Maybe you like it, maybe you like being pushed around. Maybe you love it, maybe you love getting your face stuck in the shit. Come on. You love it, donât you. You love it. Youâre all a bunch of slaves.â People cheered and laughed; they thought it was part of the act, part of the show. Finally, with the band keeping a count behind him, Morrison tried to go back to the song heâd started with, until he couldnât anymore.
Lady Gaga, âBad Romanceâ (Streamline, 2009, #1).
Train, âHey, Soul Sisterâ (Columbia, 2010, #3).
The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone, written by J. Randall Johnson and Oliver Stone (1991).
Pump Up the Volume, written and directed by Allan Moyle (1990).
Neil Young, âRockinâ in the Free Worldâ/âRockinâ in the Free Worldâ (Reprise, 1989; both versions are included on Freedom, Reprise, 1989).
p. 58, Gina Arnold, âFools Rush In,â East Bay Express , March 8, 1991, 47.
Eve Babitz, âJim Morrison Is Alive and Well and Living in Hollywood,â Esquire , March 1991.
Elvis Costello, quoted in Mark Rowland, âStrange Bedfellowsâ (joint interview with Jerry Garcia), Musician , March 1991, 57.
Ian McEwan, The Innocent (New York:
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